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Science!!! In Our Own Backyard!!!

And it is Science that shows the periodic fluctuations in our climate. Fluctuations that swamp any possible input from our industrial production of Carbon Dioxide gas. Western Washington Emeritus Professor Dr. Don J. Easterbrook writes at Watts Up With That:

New geologic evidence of past periods of oscillating, abrupt warming, and cooling
Two hundred years ago, Charles Lyell coined the phrase �The present is the key to the past.� In today�s highly contentious issues of global climate change, we might well add �The past is the key to the future, i.e., to forecast future geologic events, we must understand past climate changes. This paper documents past global climate changes in the geologic and historic past.

Recent laser imaging of the Earth�s surface provides new evidence for abrupt, fluctuating, warm and cool climatic episodes that could not have been caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. In a paper presented at the national meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, OR, Professor Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University, presented new data from airborne laser imagery showing well-defined, previously unknown, multiple moraines deposited by glaciers 11,700 to 10,250 years ago.

At least 9 significant, abrupt periods of warming that resulted in retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet are documented by moraines from successive glacial retreats in the Fraser Lowland of NW Washington l(Fig. 1). In addition, smaller multiple glacier recessions are found within the more prominent episodes of glacier retreat. As indicated by the amount of glacier recession between each of the successive moraines, the warming events were of greater magnitude than those observed in recent centuries.

The advances and retreats of the glacier coincide with Isotope data from Greenland ice cores. Easterbrook concludes his post with the following:

What we can learn from this geologic climate changes is that the past is indeed the key to the future. In 1999, the year after the warmest year of recent times, I projected the climate pattern from the past century and past 500 years into the future and predicted that we would be due for 25�30 years of global cooling beginning about 2000. The PDO changed from its warm to cool mode in 1999 and since then we have had global cooling, quite moderate to flat (interrupted by two warm El Ninos) and intensifying since 2007.

Add to this the low output of the Sun and we are going to be in for an interesting ride... Posted by DaveH at November 10, 2009 7:50 PM